Monday, September 20, 2010

A green city on a blue lake

I grew up along the banks of Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio. I can remember when city officials and TV commentators proudly referred to my hometown as "The Best Location in the Nation". That became our slogan. At some point -- it probably was shortly after the Cuyahoga River made headlines by catching on fire -- that Cleveland became the perennial butt of jokes and a new slogan emerged. We became "The Mistake On The Lake".

Cleveland has slowly been turning itself around. Now it has a plan to become "A green city on a blue lake."

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Despite the recession and mixed signals from Congress about greening American industry, some of Cleveland's largest companies are embracing a revolutionary concept called sustainability.

And when Sustainable Cleveland 2019 holds its second annual summit in the coming week, corporate executives are expected to play some the leading roles.

That's a good sign, organizers say, because only business has the combined muscle it will take to transform the economy into one that considers economic development's effect on the environment and the welfare of people.

It asserts that only companies that take care of this "triple bottom line" will survive in the coming global shortages of materials and energy as global populations expand and nations such as China and India industrialize and modernize.

Sustainability has been embraced by some of the largest global corporations such as Wal-Mart, IBM and Coca Cola. And it's the foundation for Sustainable Cleveland 2019.

"Major companies want to speak this year," said David Cooperrider, a management professor at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and a global expert on sustainability.

Cooperrider will help shape the debate at this year's two-day summit, as he did during the first summit.

"These companies are escalating their investments in going green during a time when everybody thought they would take a back seat," he said.

"The biggest transformation I have ever seen has occurred in business even at a time when politics don't support it. Sustainability is becoming embedded in the very core of these companies."

Margie Flynn, co-founder of BrownFlynn, a local corporate consulting company that teaches sustainability, said there has "clearly been an increased movement and support for sustainability" among corporations.

"Corporations recognize that sustainability is critical to their future viability and to maintain competitiveness," said Flynn, who serves on Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's sustainability advisory council.

Chuck Fowler, the chief executive officer of Fairmount Minerals in Chardon, a global supplier of purified sands, said the summit this year will include "quite a few businesspeople."

Fowler, a long-time advocate and practitioner of sustainability, said the city and its advisory council has done a fine job explaining Sustainable Cleveland 2019 to local companies.

"They've come to the trough. Now let's see if we can get them to drink the water," he said.

Corporations are helping fund this year's event, a change from last year when the city had to raise the approximate $100,000 it spent on the first summit from foundations.

Eaton Corp, Forest City, Dominion East Ohio, Consolidated Graphics, NPI Audio Visual Solutions and Fairmount Minerals are among the companies that each contributed $10,000 to sponsor this year's summit.

Ideas for creatinga sustainable economy

There is no blueprint for creating a sustainable economy in Northeast Ohio.

But there are a lot of ideas, a tremendous reservoir of enthusiasm, an army of volunteers ready to make a go of it and increasing support from the region's corporations.

And now there is an encyclopedia of what has been proposed in the year since Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson hosted a sustainability summit and a decade-long drive he called Sustainable Cleveland 2019.

The Action and Resource Guide, though encyclopedic in detail, is really just a framework to organize and develop the initiatives that grew out of the 2009 summit.

The guide will be a key part of this year's summit, on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

The guide's massive compilation and analysis assumes that economic, environmental and societal problems are interrelated -- and can't be solved alone. It assumes that they have converged into one problem.

That convergence point is where sustainable development begins.

Where it ends is a change in the cultural values that underlie everything, from every day life to the decisions corporations make to the policies governments develop.

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast," the guide asserts.

"Culture is a key challenge in accelerating change. Without a culture change that embraces sustainability, inertia will trump the best laid strategies and business will continue as usual, which is not good for Cleveland's economy."

The guide argues that for that cultural change to happen:

• People have to think about changing their lives along sustainable principles -- for example, by adopting conservation at home and by working to create a sense of "neighborliness" in the neighborhood and volunteering on community projects

• Governments on all levels have to look at how brownfields and waste can become fuel or feed stocks in order to clean up the environmental problems created by past generations by prioritizing green projects and buying from companies that have adopted sustainability.

• Cities have to consider whether proposed developments can be sustainable in the long run and promote sustainable development at all levels.

• Business has to adopt cleaner and more efficient technologies and "green" their supply chains -- for example, by looking for raw materials in the waste produced by another industry and by supporting Sustainable Cleveland 2019.

The guide also proposes to shine a spotlight, or "celebrate," specific initiatives for an entire year through 2019 as a way to promote sustainability as a value.

Energy efficiency and the myriad programs associated with achieving efficiency in the home, office and factory, will be the focus next year, for example.

In 2012, the guide advises that local food production be the focus to converge with the 100th anniversary of the West Side Market. Northeast Ohio spends $10 billion per year on food. Increasing purchases of locally grown food would keep part of that money in the region.

In 2013, when the new company developing wind in Lake Erie hopes to have five turbines operating, the emphasis will be renewable resources and advanced energy.

Jackson called the first summit in August 2009 and unveiled its ambitious goal to change the course of Cleveland's history in the next decade.

Using sustainability concepts as the organizing foundation, Jackson proposed changing the city and region's direction from one of decline to vibrant growth that would reshape not only the local economy but where Clevelanders live, what they eat, what they pay for energy, where they work and how they get there.

The city invited about 600 people to the first summit. More than 700 showed up to talk about what sustainability means, how it would work and what it would do for the region.

The summit was the first of its kind in the nation. That's because it threw together people of all ages with a broad range of interests, from avowed environmentalists to suited-up CEOs.

The response was electric as the crowds coalesced into working groups based on their interests and brainstormed under Cooperrider's careful direction.

The whole process is called "appreciative inquiry" because it looks for and focuses on the strengths a company's employees - or in this case a region's citizens - possess rather than their weaknesses. Cooperrider has conducted more than 500 such events around the globe for corporations, governments, the Navy and even the Dalai Lama.

The city has invited 500 to the second summit, planned for Wednesday and Thursday at Public Hall. And there is still room for a few more participants, said Andrew Watterson, the city's sustainability chief.

The working groups in the 2009 summit came up with literally thousands of ideas. At least 15 of the 20 working groups have continued to meet over the entire year.

In fact, one group, the Green Building Retrofit Group, will give its latest report at the monthly meeting of E4S -- Entrepreneurs for Sustainability -- on Tuesday.

The mayor appointed some last year's participants and summit organizers to a volunteer advisory council to help compile and collate the avalanche of ideas.

Then, with about $200,000 in grants from foundations, the city hired a consulting company to develop the beginnings of a strategy.

Working with summit participants and organizers, the Economic Transformations Group Inc. of New York City produced what it calls an "Action and Resource Guide."

That guide, nearly 300 pages long, will play a big role at this year's summit - and probably for the rest of the decade, with additions as needed.

Holly Harlan, president of E4S and a member of the advisory council, said the document is the foundation for a 10-year plan.

"We will be learning from it and adding to it, as opposed to 'this is what you are going to do,' " she said.

David Nash, a Cleveland environmental attorney and co-convener of the Corporate Sustainability Network and also a member of the advisory council, said the huge guide is more like a tool kit than a blueprint.

"It's not a top down action plan. It's a beginning, not an end," he said. "It links the ideas that came out of the '09 summit."

"It's like a cook book, but without exact recipes. But it will give you an idea, for example, of how you will make a pie in the future."

Nash thinks the summit and those that follow represent a rare opportunity.

"We will be linking the entrepreneurs and innovators, the grass roots community, with the players in business for real wealth creation," he said.

Those new collaborations that will drive economic growth, he said, and change not only the economy but the way people think -- the culture.

It's the change in culture that is imperative, Nash said.

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast," he said, quoting a line in the guide.